Boston's business elite has been busy this past week. Catch up on who's going where below:
Diane Hessan announced that she will be stepping down from her role as chief executive to slide into a new role as chairman at Communispace. After an illustrious 14-year tenure, the CEO will officially pass off the reins on March 1st to Charles Trevail, the former CEO of Promise, a Communispace executive and overall thought leader within the co-creation field. Hessan plans to spend the majority of her time with clients and partners in the marketplace, according to the release. Noted Hessan:
2013 has been one of our best years ever.We launched our 700th community, welcomed our 500th employee, opened several additional offices around the world, built fantastic new capabilities, and sustained our 92 percent client retention rate. It’s a great time for me to step aside and pave the way for new leadership and fresh thinking.
Nashua, New Hampshire-based DataGravity appointed VMware veteran Michael White to director of product management, in which he will focus on storage and application integration. White brings with him nearly three decades of rich experience in product design, virtualization, business continuity and more from VMware, where he served as an integration architect. This news comes just a week after VMware tapped one of Boston’s own – University of Massachusetts Boston grad Ben Fathi – for the role of CTO .
Cloud service video provider and Boston anchor company Brightcove welcomed Derek Harrar to its board of directors this week. Harrar led all aspects of Comcast’s cardinal video business, including digital cable, HD and VOD as the company’s senior vice president and manager of video and entertainment services. Further, he co-founded and served as vice president of business development at Silicon Valley startup MegaSense.
“Addressing delivery and monetization of online video with one suite of cloud services represents another example of a great team proactively evolving a world-class company to lead in the dynamic, rapid-growth online video sector,” shared Harrar in the release. “I look forward to contributing to the company’s success going forward.”
Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson announced this week that he will step down from his position at the helm of the company in March, a month after he celebrates his 65th birthday in February. Following in his footsteps is Thomas Kennedy, another veteran executive of the company, which is one of the largest employers in the area. Kennedy currently serves as Raytheon’s COO.
CloudBees named Koshuke Kawaguchi the startup's first-ever CTO on Thursday. As one of the company's co-founders, Kawaguchi has been instrumental in leading the four-year-old company's growth. In his new role, he will be responsible for leading the development of CloudBees’ tech strategy.
JPMorgan Chase is closing the curtain on its office in Lowell, Mass., and as a result, laying off all 60 of the branch’s employees. The layoffs will begin in March, according to a letter Chase provided former Lowell Mayor Patrick Murphy. Of those 60 jobs being cut, about 30 are IT and developer positions.
